Well, that's the spirit, Nicole...and I'm glad you have it.

My really strong and eternal objection to our present election system is: the PARTY system itself. I would like to see it done away with and vote for individuals on their own merits and ideas and record. Individuals are free of the constraints of party line, and are more likely to think independently and respond to their constituents rather than their caucus leader. They are also more likely to form a cooperative national assembly that actually tries to get something done, rather than an eternally divided one that is at war with its opposite half. I have reached the point where I truly hate political parties and party politics with all its ugly drama and corruption.

And WHAT a waste of money it all is!!!

But what the hell, it's like talking to polar bears about a place with no snow when you suggest this to most people...they just don't believe it's possible... :-)

(despite the fact that it has been done in numerous places during past history...with good results...and is being done in hundreds of civic municipalities right now all over North America)

Imagine a life without the Redemocrapublicants...and the 5 (or so) lots of bozos who regularly advance to the polls in Canada intent on driving each other into political extinction!!! God, it would be just so heavenly...

Actually, this is a systematic problem in our whole society, I think: the notion that to get anything done, you've got to divide people up into 2 (or more) competing teams, set them to work attacking each other, and to the winners the spoils. I consider that an incredibly destructive and stupid philosophical basis for a society to build itself upon. It's ritual war, acted out in different arenas, according to certain rules of combat.

I would much rather vote for free independent people, rather than the craven employees and yes men of a corrupt, self-serving bureaucratic machine concerned only with its own enlargment and continuance in the halls of power.

- LH